PACS:
1. n. (acronym)Picture Archiving and Communications System. A device or group of devices and associated network components designed to store and retrieve medical images.
2. n. (acronym)Pain And Constant Suffering.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Displaying The Future: Project Glass

Google and Apple, two companies that didn't exist for much of my lifetime, are out to change the world and the way we interact with it. Today's post examines a new way of looking at our world, courtesy of Google, although I'm sure we'll hear about project iGlass from Apple one of these days...

Google's Project Glass follows the same philosophy I advocate for PACS:

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.

The lead photo above shows what this mobile heads-up display might look like to those outside the Matrix.

The YouTube concept video is quite compelling...not only does Google envision the mating of the real to the virtual in this manner, they seem to think they can outdo Siri, and without the annoying metallic female voice to boot. More power to them.

Naturally, the second thing I thought of was how this technology might be applied to PACS. The possibilities here are endless. How about displaying the pertinent anatomy to a surgeon who is knee-deep in someone's abdomen? Or maybe utilizing computer aided diagnosis (CAD) while reading studies. Or maybe reading studies without a monitor altogether. I wonder how many pixels this thing may ultimately manifest?

What's that? What was the first thing I thought of? Well...we all know what has driven most other technology over the years. Think Gutenberg andI Modi. Now you know why the young lady in the photo is so happy.